Architecture Everywhere: Outpost Office's Ashley Bigham on Building a Body of Work and Looking to the Future
By Julia Gamolina
Ashley Bigham is the co-founder of Outpost Office, and an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the Knowlton School at The Ohio State University. Previously, she was the Walter B. Sanders Fellow at the Taubman College of Architecture and a Fulbright Fellow in Ukraine. She holds a Master of Architecture from Yale University School of Architecture and a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design. In her interview with Julia, Ashley talks about building a body of work through an academic practice, advising those just starting their careers to build a digital network and to be supportive of others’ work.
JG: How did your interest in architecture first develop?
AB: I was always a very creative kid, and always interested in design. I’m from a really small town in a very rural area in Tennessee - a town of 900 people - so I didn’t know what architecture was and had never met an architect. However, I was born into a family of women who made things. My grandmother owned a small antique store, my mother sewed clothes and was a Home Economics teacher, and my other grandmother just made a lot of things. I grew up in this culture of making, and was interested in fashion, film, and other creative pursuits early on.
What did you learn in eventually studying architecture?
The main lesson was how rewarding the work can be. We talk a lot about the difficulty of architecture school and the long hours, but the best part about studying architecture was the sense of accomplishment and reward that you feel when you do follow through and complete a project through to the end. Once you experience that a few times, you’re always chasing that. You establish really good working habits too and you find out how to work best.
Safety Not Guaranteed. Courtesy of Outpost Office
Upstate House. Courtesy of Outpost Office
How did you get your start in the field?
I graduated from the University of Tennessee in 2009; we were still feeling the recession then, and it was difficult - I know this is a common theme in many of your interviews. The first thing I did was some freelance work for some architects when I was in Baton Rouge, and then one of my first professional experiences was at MOS, in New Haven. My husband Erik had just started at Yale, and it just so happened that I got a job at MOS. I was there for a year, and this was right before graduate school.
My time there was a really formative experience for me. Hilary and Michael were modeling a partnership that in many ways, Erik and I have now, where we have an academic practice but we also have intentions to build ground-up work and be professional architects. That’s a really difficult balance to strike well, so we always seek out role models for those kinds of partnerships.
Tell me about your time in graduate school at Yale.
A graduate degree was a natural next step, since I had wanted to both teach and practice. Tennessee had laid a great foundation for me, but Yale added a whole other dimension and perspective. That was the first time that I lived somewhere other than the South - I had traveled some in undergrad, so by the time I got to Yale I had already started to develop an interest and fascination with traveling a lot as part of research.
Then when I graduated from Yale, I was a Fulbright fellow in Ukraine! We moved there in 2014, which happened to coincide with the Euromaidan Revolution as well. Needless to say, I had been planning on doing the Fulbright and moving to Ukraine for a couple of years, and suddenly, a few months before I was getting on the plane, the country was breaking out in turmoil. It was a fascinating but also difficult time to be there, but I loved it so much that I continued to do a lot of work there, and work there in the summers with NGOs, educational groups, non-profits, and other organizations like that to support the architectural community there.
“It’s important for us to balance the construction projects with the intellectually challenging and fun shorter-term initiatives that we have. The mix of this keeps us interested in architecture.”
Why Ukraine?
I had done a study-abroad in Poland - the University of Tennessee just had a longstanding exchange program there. During my time in Poland, I got interested in Eastern Europe in general, and eventually wanted something more challenging. I was wanting to go somewhere where I would really feel a cultural difference, and experience something very different than I had before in my life. It was quite a departure from Connecticut [laughs].
After Ukraine, my husband got a fellowship in Germany, so we moved to Germany for a year. That was another lesson in partnership, and working with my husband, and it was really incredible. I feel very lucky that we were able to have a practice, a career, and a life together, though what that has meant is that it sometimes brings us to different locations for each other. This has always worked out though, and for the benefit for us, and that part of our career and our life is wonderful.
When did you move back to the States?
After a year in Germany, we did realize and decide we wanted our long term careers to be in the United States, and moved back shortly after that. I got a teaching fellowship at the University of Michigan, so we moved there and stayed for three years teaching. Then almost two years ago, we took tenure track positions at Ohio State University, at the Knowlton School of Architecture, which is where we are now.
Kharkiv School Open Work Installation. Photography by Andrew Yarygin.
Kharkiv School Open Work Workshop. Photography by Andrew Yarygin.
Kharkiv School Open Work. Photography by Andrew Yarygin.
What was the driving force behind this step? The opportunity for tenure, the location?
In thinking about the question you typically ask about challenges, I realized that one of mine indeed was the constant moving - from Louisiana, to Connecticut, to Ukraine, then Germany, and finally Michigan. Then add in jobs before and after graduate school. I’m really thankful for this time, and for the wonderful experiences we’ve had living in different parts of the world, but after some time we were both ready to have a little more stability and to plan further in advance.
We did want to start a practice, and to build buildings, and sometimes you do need to know where you will be next year [laughs], just geographically speaking. We were ready to make a commitment to a place, and it was the Knowlton School that really drew us.
Tell me now about Outpost Office.
The security of the academic tenure-track job has actually allowed us to dedicate more time to our practice, and to grow the types and scales of projects that we take on. Right now we’re working on a small residential project that will be our first ground-up building. We also thought that in Columbus, ground-up projects would be more possible, as opposed to working in New York. Working on the edges of things - as our name, Outpost, suggests - and trying to find productive moments with working in the margins has been really productive.
“I always try to look to the future...I hope that my biggest career highlights are all ahead of me.”
Where do you feel like you’re in your career today?
I’m transitioning now to think more about long-term projects. For a while, Outpost Office did really short and quick projects, which are really exciting - things like exhibition design, where you can go from getting the project to it being fully concluded within four or six months. Buildings obviously take a lot longer [laughs].
For a while, I was really excited about these short projects, but now we’re taking on things that are more long-term, while at the same time, keeping things like our podcast. It’s important for us to balance the construction projects with the intellectually challenging and fun shorter-term initiatives that we have. The mix of this keeps us interested in architecture. We always knew that keeping a sort of strangeness and inventiveness of our work was going to be important to the longevity of the practice.
We touched on this earlier, but what have been the biggest challenges for you?
With Outpost Office, we’re constantly building a body of work. As we build that body of work, there have been a lot of really interesting questions about what we want the direction of the firm to be. Many architects say that in the first few years, they say yes to everything. We’ve done that in many ways, but we’re at a point now where we know a little bit about what we’d want to say no to. It’s a way that we can value our own time, and think about the time that we have for design and creativity for the day. What do we want to spend those hours doing?
It’s been a very productive challenge, but also one that allows us not to rely on client-based work for our salaries. I think that’s important to acknowledge, that academic practices can indeed do work that doesn’t turn a profit. It’s not always the best thing, but some of the projects are really rewarding. I just met with a non-profit group recently that needs some work done, and I really support their mission, so we are going through with this project. Similarly, the work I do in Ukraine is along those lines - I’m helping architectural schools there with their curriculum, because I really support the fundamental core goal that Ukrainian students deserve a wonderful architectural education like we have in the US. For those reasons, I do work without expecting financial compensation from it all the time, and our academic salaries allow us to do that.
Color Block. Courtesy of Outpost Office.
Another Stack. Courtesy of Outpost Office
What are you most proud of?
We’ve had some great successes - we were really excited to be one of Architect Magazine’s Next Progressives last year, and different things like this. The various projects we’ve done are also always highlights, especially in the moment that you’re doing them. I always try to look to the future, actually. I hope that my biggest career highlights are all ahead of me. I’m always looking to the next project, and to continue to develop a set of interests.
What would you say your core mission is? What’s the impact you’d like to have on the world?
I mentioned that we have a podcast, which is called Site Visit. And the tagline for the podcast is that it’s a podcast about architecture everywhere. Even though that’s really vague, I think that’s a fundamental mission of my work, and also that of Outpost. We feel strongly that architecture is everywhere and all around us, and to that’s how we approach discourse about it. I studied the markets and bazaars in Ukraine when I was there, and giant pieces of Soviet infrastructure, and I think things like this are equally important to architecture - the informality of a market is equally as important as the top-down constructivist architecture of concrete. These things are both equally important to me, in my work, in my research, and in what I communicate to students.
“We feel strongly that architecture is everywhere and all around us...I studied the markets and bazaars in Ukraine when I was there, and...the informality of a market is equally as important as the top-down constructivist architecture of concrete.”
Who are you admiring right now?
There are so many young contemporary practices, all across the US and Europe, that are my colleagues and friends and who I’m continually inspired by. For this though, I’m thinking more and more about people who have consistently maintained practices for decades. As someone who has had a practice for five or six years, the idea of decades is a really daunting but inspiring thing. I think about Amale Andraos, Deborah Berke, Meejin Yoon - I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they’re all deans. There’s a leadership set of skills that goes along with that practice longevity, and an intellectual curiosity that’s sustained, and I admire that a lot. People that bring an endless curiosity to and about the world.
Finally, what advice do you have for those just starting their careers?
Seek out the colleagues that you want to surround yourself with, and note that those colleagues don’t have to be in the same geographical location as you, as we’re all experiencing now. I’ve worked hard to create a conversation with people whose work I find interesting and who I want to engage with, and building relationships with those people no matter where they might be, or how I met them. Some I’ve met on Instagram!
We met on Instagram!
Exactly [laughs]. There are so many ways to build a digital network, and despite some of the negativity and terrible things that happen online, there is so much opportunity for positivity, and encouragement, and being supportive of people’s work. Finding those supportive networks can make a big difference, and being supportive to your core group of colleagues, whoever they happen to be, is a really valuable experience.